Fast, actionable advice from Founders, CEOs, and Investors

Ryan Howard (Founder @ Practice Fusion) Transcript: Protecting yourself as the founder; Ryan Howard | VatorNewsAnother micro-strategy, this is more about the founder having some options on liquidity. This is effectively another thing you can do when you’re incorporating the company and putting together your original restricted stock purchase agreement, is issuing a portion of your state shares as Class-FF shares. This is a class of shares that was invented by Peter Thiel and Shawn Parker and what it is is it’s effectively a preferred share. If you have so… (read more)

Stephen Cohen (Co-founder and EVP at Palantir Technologies) Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup – Class 5 Notes Essay[in a Q&A] Question: What if engineers are in love with something else, but you think they’d fall in love with your company if they were to join you? Stephen Cohen: Reframe that question in a marriage context. Don’t you think that would make for a higher than normal rate of divorce?

Stephen Cohen (Co-founder and EVP at Palantir Technologies) Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup – Class 5 Notes EssayThere is probably some sum of money you could pay to any engineer to work at Palantir and give it their all for one year. But there is no sum of money that you could pay any engineer to go all-out for ten years. Humans can’t muster that amount of sustained focus and energy if they don’t love what they’re doing. The folks who fall in love aren’t asking details about salary, trying to extract every penny.

Jeffrey Minch (Entrepreneur – ‎Littlefield Advisors) The Co-Founder Bootcamp – AVCWhen there were problems it was ALWAYS about the definition of the role — mine or theirs. If you want to sort out roles, define them. If you want to reduce friction, investigate from whence it comes and it will likely come from a gap or a burr in that role definition. Talk about it before it comes to blows. Tension is normal when people are moving fast. It is normal. You want tension.

Sam Altman (President at Y Combinator) Non-technical founder? Learn to hack – Sam AltmanWhen non-technical solo founders say “I’ll do whatever it takes to make this business successful” (which they almost always say), I say something like “Why not learn to hack? Although it takes many, many years to become a great hacker, you can learn to be good enough to build your site or app in a few months.

Paul Graham (Co-Founder & Partner at Y Combinator) Why to Not Not Start a StartupIf you don’t have a cofounder, what should you do? Get one. It’s more important than anything else. If there’s no one where you live who wants to start a startup with you, move where there are people who do. If no one wants to work with you on your current idea, switch to an idea people want to work on.